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This is an ethnographic study, conducted in Dalian between June 1997 and 2002, of a sample of singleton urban youths and their families. The author interviewed high school boys and girls and their families about their hopes for college and the elite jobs expected upon graduation. Given that Fong (now an assistant professor in the Harvard School of Education) was then a graduate student at Harvard, home of some of the most respected anthropology and sociology faculty whose careers began with survey projects such as this, there are understandingly high hopes for this book (the revised product of her dissertation). Although the footprint of the dissertation (in style and, to some extent, in theory) remains to distract the China specialist occasionally, the book is fascinating and, as book editors often say, "a good read."Over the last 20 years, there have been a number of studies by Chinese and foreign scholars on the establishment, provision, effectiveness and consequences of the so-called single child family (SCF) policy. This controversial policy, subject to different interpretations and more effective in urban China than in rural areas, seems well established. The generation of young people now coming of age includes the so-called singletons. Fong has contributed to our understanding of their situation by her use of the term "only hope," by which she means these children are the only hope for a growing number of aging, city-dwelling parents, who are without jobs or welfare protection, and thus facing a bleak future.

James R. Townsend, emeritus professor of political science and East Asian studies in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle, passed away peacefully on January 17, 2004 after a decade-long battle with cancer. He was 71.Professor Townsend was a member of the first post-Second World War generation of China scholars. He studied in the late 1950s and early 1960s at one of the Centers for Chinese Studies that had been established by the Ford Foundation to supplement traditional discipline training. Townsend completed his PhD at the University of California at Berkeley, as did other prominent scholars such as Fred Wakeman (history), Chalmers Johnson (political science), Paul Ivory (economics), and Woody Watson (anthropology). He commenced his teaching career in the Berkeley department of political science, only to be recruited away by the University of Washington in 1968. Washington remained his home base thereafter.Jim Townsend's place in the development of contemporary Chinese studies was multifaceted, due to his intellectual ability, his deep personal commitment to expanded knowledge and interest in China and, equally important, his unique personality. He was a teacher, a researcher and an advocate of knowledge for knowledge's sake.

Despite the need for and importance of a book on birth control, the obstacles to a successful volume are daunting and have, until this publication, served to limit the possibility of a thorough-going analysis. The reasons are numerous. Since 1949 there have been a series of policies initiated and then set aside. Every policy seems to have had some exceptions, sometimes written and observable, on other occasions intuited from reports in newspapers and interviews. Though the diversity of the country is well recognized, understanding how it plays out in actual policy trends is much harder to assess. Until the past decade, detailed information has often been scarce and demographic indicators have been viewed with some suspicion. It is against this background that Thomas Scharping, with a lengthy and distinguished record of research, has written a study designed to fill this gap in our knowledge of Chinese development. The English version reviewed here draws on his revised 1995 German-language volume.